i'm awake in the infinite cold
by neonrocks
Summary: She lets her head fall against her knees, relishing in the momentary flash of pain. It's the only thing that reminds her she's still alive after so much time in the dark, damp cell of Azkaban.


**A/N: **I wrote this back in '05 while I was still in high school, under a different penname, and then I had rewritten it a few years later, but never reposted it. Now I'm archiving all my fics between here and LJ. We'll see how it goes.

This is AU, in a world where Harry doesn't kill Voldemort, and the Death Eaters take over. I wrote it before HBP came out, even though it sat on my computer for a while, and so there are certainly a lot of OOC elements. But I had a lot of fun writing it back then, and hopefully you'll enjoy it. Anyways, thank you for reading!

Warnings at the end.

**i'm awake in the infinite cold  
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She sits huddled in a wet corner of her cell, eyes clenched shut and knees hugged closely to her chest; it's freezing, but Hermione can no longer feel the chill in the air. She lets her head fall against her knees, relishing in the momentary flash of pain. It's the only thing that reminds her she's still alive after so much time in the dark, damp cell of Azkaban. She does it again and again, until the door slides open and a masked figure grabs her hair and rips her head back, throwing her flat on the ground.

"Not yet, Mudblood. We can't have you hurting yourself before your big day," he says, pulling her head up roughly. He leans in close to her face, and she can see blue eyes shining bright behind the Death Eater mask he wears. She almost laughs at the cheerful color, but she cannot find the energy in herself. "Stupid Mudblood. You're nothing but a filthy whore. Where's Saint Potter now?"

She doesn't have the willpower to fight back. Her eyes merely roll back into her head as she starts reliving the war. The Second Great War. She hears Ron yelling at her to stay with him.

_We'll be safer in numbers_, he says.

_We can regroup and help Harry together_, he says.

But she doesn't listen. She sets off on her own, jumping over the bodies littering the ground. She recognizes some faces, and she's almost positive she saw Oliver Wood exhaling, but she has no time to stop and make sure; she needs to get to Harry. She finds him, locked in a dual with the Dark Lord himself, until the death. She hears curses flying all around her, even deflects a few, but her focus remains on Harry. She's never loved anyone quite how she loved him, and she still sees his green eyes, sparkling with mischief when she tries to sleep. She sees his smile, which never faltered, even though he knew his life was always in danger.

She's so focused on the battle in front of her - two of the greatest wizards in history - that she doesn't hear the curse coming towards her. But Harry does, and their eyes meet for a fleeting second. And that is all the time Voldemort needs; a flash of green light passes over them and Harry falls. She falls a moment later, writing in agony, her screams ringing across what once used to be Hogwarts.

She has no more tears to cry over Harry's death. She's been locked in Azkaban since that day, almost a year earlier. She thinks her birthday may have passed in that time, making her nineteen, but life holds so little meaning for her that it doesn't matter. She's been ravished, beaten, exploited and forced to relive that moment so many times that she almost welcomes the end she surely knows is coming.

The masked man slams her head against the wall one last time before leaving. "Bitch," he spits in her face, closing the door behind him and letting complete darkness fall over the cell again. Hermione wraps her arms around her knees again, hopelessly trying to control her shivering body. She notices the lump that's kept her company once her eyes readjust to the darkness. He'd been brought in sometime in the past week, or at least that's what she thinks; she's had so many cellmates that she no longer keeps track of little things like that.

But this one is different. They've only spoken once since he's been brought in, and from what she's gathered from the guards, he'd failed the Dark Lord somehow. And for that, he's being executed.

She'd feel sadness and pity for him if she had anything left to feel.

"Granger," he tries, his voice raspy from not being used for a week, save for screaming.

She's startled, to say the least, after having only screams accompanying her. She yelps and knocks her head on the wall, "fuck," she says, her own voice sounding foreign to her.

"Granger, it's just me," he says again, his voice laden with that distinctive drawl she hated so much in school. Amazing, she thinks, that he still has it after so much torture, "come here."

"Wh-why? Aren't you afraid of my filth?" She manages to spit back at him, surprising herself with how much venom she can muster. She knows it's ridiculous, but her hatred of him is the only thing that she can tie to her happier years at Hogwarts, so she's refusing to let it go, even hours before she's scheduled to die.

"Granger, you're ridiculous. Look at the situation we're in. Pureblood, half-blood, mudblood, those words mean absolutely nothing. My blood didn't save me from this fate. Potter's blood isn't the reason he's dead and your blood isn't the reason you're in here. Just come here."

"Why?" She asks again, this time more confidently.

"Because I'll be a coward if I can't do this to your face."

She mulls it over for a moment, before opening her mouth to speak again, "you come over here."

"Granger," he manages to sound defeated and exasperated at the same time, "I made the first move. Do me a favor and haul yourself over here."

She deliberates it for a few minutes, but gives in and crawls over to where she can make out the faint outline of his body, "what do you want, Malfoy?"

She hears him suck in a deep breath, then exhale loudly, "I'd rather not die with this hostility between us."

For the first time in a year, Hermione feels an emotion other than the constant fear she's lived in. She feels shock, and narrows her eyes, even though she knows he can't see her, "Is that an apology?"

"Take it how you want, Granger. Just know that I don't want that hanging between us in the afterworld."

They sit in silence for a long time, maybe an hour, maybe two. Neither one has any concept of time anymore. Finally, Hermione speaks up again.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why now? If this is the end, then I want to know why."

She hears him breathe in deeply again, and this time she notices how pained his breaths are; there's a slight wheeze with every inhalation, "My mother always told me that the soul of a man who goes to his grave never having sought forgiveness will never find peace. I don't want to be that man, Granger, and you're the only one here," he pauses for a second before continuing, "strangely, you're the one I've wrong the most," she can almost hear the smile in his voice.

She mulls it over, sitting next to him for another ten minutes or so, before breaking the silence again, "Ok."

"What?"

"Ok. I accept your apology."

She hears his head thump against the cement wall behind them, "You have every right to refuse me. I have done nothing but make your life hell. I'm the reason Dumbledore is dead. I tormented you everyday growing up. I'm responsible for the murders of dozens upon dozens of people."

"And I'm the reason Harry's dead. I tormented you everyday also, and I too, am responsible for many, many deaths. I took away just as many fathers, mothers and children as you did. We are no different from each other, Malfoy. What makes you better is that you apologized. I would've let both of us die hating each other."

Hemione feels his eyes boring holes in her body. He has a certain intensity not many people can match, but she expects that. After all, the only wizard her age she knew was more powerful than him was Harry, and Harry was dead. Draco was now the most powerful wizard his age.

"Besides," she starts again, "I have enough bad memories. I'd rather make good ones out of my last moments in this world."

She feels herself smiling, a completely foreign sensation she hasn't felt since the beginning of her imprisonment. Suddenly her final moments don't seem so bad.

The next morning creeps up on them unexpectedly. A faint light shines into the cell from a crack in the wall, and both Hermione and Draco wait for the morning guard. They had a surprisingly good night, considering they were both sentenced to die the next morning. She told him about her parents and life as a muggle, and he shared stories of the trouble he used to get into for destroying his mother's garden.

They're engrossed in a conversation about electrical appliances when they hear the rattling of keys down the hallway, squashing the jovial spirit of the room.

"This is it," Draco starts, "the end. Are you ready?"

"No, this is only the beginning of something greater. I can feel it."

"You can feel it?" He asks, a bit of confusion and teasing in his voice.

"Yes," she replies, a smile tugging at her lips, "for the first time in a long time, I can feel. So thank you."

He furrows his brow in confusion, "for what?"

"For letting me feel again," she says, looking away from his eyes. Some strands of her hair fall onto her face, and she quickly brushes them back before looking up at him again, "If not for you, I would've been thinking of this moment all night, and I would've been miserable. But you," she points at him, "you're something different. I only wish I could have seen it earlier and not when we're both about to die."

He drops her gaze and looks down at this hands, "I wish-" He stops suddenly.

"What? What do you wish?" She scoots over closer to him, watching him wring his hands over and over again.

"Nevermind. It's silly," he laughs humorlessly.

"Nothing's silly anymore. Look at what these circumstances have done to us. How can you possibly think anything is silly after last night? Now, will you tell me what you wish?"

"I wish I had told you so many things sooner," he says, looking directly into her eyes, "I wish I had told you that I didn't torture you because of your blood. From the moment I met you, I no longer believed in any of that blood nonsense."

"What? Why?"

"You broke every stereotype my father ever taught me, he says, his voice getting increasingly louder, "You weren't stupid or weak. You weren't a coward. You weren't ugly. Now that I think of it, you were smarter than every pureblooded wizard I ever met, including my father. Just look at where he is now."

"I capitalized on his mistake. Anyone could've done that."

"You were quick, Hermione," he stresses her name, trying to get her to understand that no, it couldn't have been anyone, "He would've realized in time had it been anyone else. But it was you and now he's dead."

"I'm sorry I had to do that."

"No. You had every right. He killed many people without motive. Just because he felt like it."

Hermione looks at him for the first time in the nearly ten years she's known him. His hair no longer shines, instead hanging limp and knotted around his dirt-streaked face. There are several scars adorning the exposed areas of his body, and she can see the faint, yellowing bruises in the shape of a handprint around his neck. His arm hangs in a makeshift sling he's made himself out of his own pant leg, but it's his eyes she can't tear her gaze from. They hold the look of someone forced to grow up too quickly, someone who's seen too much in his short life. She can feel his exhaustion, radiating from his body. And yet, nothing has ever seemed so beautiful to her than him in this moment.

Tentatively, she edges closer to him, until her hip hits his on the floor. She silently reaches up to his face, tracing the angry scar that runs from his eyebrow to his cheek. She sees the confusion in his eyes, but he quickly closes them and leans into her touch, turning his face slightly to leave a kiss on her palm. He opens his eyes again and looks directly into hers.

She's not sure who makes the first move, but she feels his lips on hers and his hand come up to rest on her face. She can feel him holding back, so she prods at him slightly until his lips move over hers. It's chaste, really, shy, and bittersweet. She feels the forgiveness between them, and the potential for something more worthwhile. Something that makes her want to live. She's sure he can feel it too.

They tear away from each other when they hear the fumbling outside their cell door. Hermione crawls back to her damp corner quickly, hugging her legs close to her body, watching him as intently as he watches her. Neither speaks, for fear of ruining the spirit in the room. They're both happy, dementors be damned.

The door opens and a man draped in black slides in. He points his wand at Hermione's wrists and a gray light wraps itself around them before solidifying into a wire, binding them together. Then he turns and does the same to Draco before placing them under the Imperius curse and moving them out of the cell.

Too weak to fight the curse, they follow him out to a courtyard, where hundreds of Death Eaters have gathered. Above them sits Voldemort, his red eyes gleeful with anticipation. They're led to the middle, where the gallows stand. Hermione thinks it gruesome that they would choose to execute people in such a barbaric manner, especially when there are cleaner, less horrifying ways. She finds a noose already around her neck when the Imperius curse is lifted, and when she casts a glance at Draco, she sees he has one as well.

She holds his eye until the booming voice of a Death Eater cuts through the silence, "Let it be known that on this day, the 17th of May, 1999, the mudblood Hermione Granger will be executed by hanging for crimes committed against His Excellence, the Great Lord Voldemort," he rolls up the scroll he was reading from before unrolling another, "Let it be known that on this day, the 17th of May, 1999, Draco Malfoy, disgraced son of the war hero Lucius Malfoy, who gave his life for the Dark Lord, will be executed by hanging for personal offenses against His Excellence, the Great Lord Voldemort," he rolls the scroll up and forcibly prods both Hermione and Draco over the trap doors that will lead them to their deaths.

"Until the next life," Hermione hears Draco say before the doors give way. She feels a horrible pressure on her neck and finally, nothing. She is free.

**Warning:** character death


End file.
